AMUSING, INTERESTING, OUTRAGEOUS, or PROFOUND

Source: nzz.ch

This movie even has Ronnie Raygun in it!

Soldiers during World War 2 frequently put on drag performances!

There were even workshops where women taught GIs how to wear makeup!

I’d really like to see if anything about Jumping with Jodie still exists - not a lot is turning up on search.

Lead Belly, Wikipedia.

It was a warning — a spoken-word portent of the dangers lurking in plain sight. A call to vigilance. A whispered watchword passed between those who knew the system was not built for them. From churches to courtrooms, ballrooms to drinking fountains, every institution was wired against them.

“Liberty and justice for all” was a hollow mantra, a borrowed line from movie scripts, not a manifest reality. A promise that never crossed the color barrier. A refrain as empty as the bridge of a vapid pop song, sung past the millions it excluded. The very same who weren’t included in the declaration that claimed that all men were created equal and who were barred from the promised unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

“So I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there [Alabama]—best stay woke, keep their eyes open.”

The word is short. It bursts from puckered lips and explodes in a dead-end consonant. It’s a four-letter epithet, one that its user might not even fully comprehend. Its deliberate morphosyntactic rebellion only adds to its iconoclastic aura. It refused to follow the rules and didn’t care whether it was misunderstood and today it challenges those that use it to grapple with its depth and true meaning.

It was in 1938, during the segregated black-and-white days of the American South, that this zeitgeist word was first recorded. Linguistic history was made by a man who carried a thousand songs in his memory from across generations and was himself a product of the nineteenth century. Huddie Ledbetter, better known as Lead Belly, the self-described “musicianer” (to avoid pigeonholing tags like bluesman or folk singer) was first recorded using the word in this context, warning his listeners to be vigilant against a system raised against them. He finishes his song with a warning, a stark reminder to northern blacks that the freedom they believed they possessed was fragile; in the segregationist South, those rights could vanish in an instant. He intones that they best stay ‘woke’.

The song preceding the warning is deceptively cheerful, the kind of tune that might get your foot tapping while your civil rights disappear. It jumps, it swings, it practically begs for a dance floor. You can picture Lead Belly smiling as he plays it, which only adds to its cunning. The genius lies in the bait: rhythm first, truth second. The listener is already halfway to the chorus before the full weight of the message sets in, this charming little ditty is a canary in the coal mine.

“Be careful. Stay woke. Keep your eyes open.” He wasn’t offering travel advice. He was sounding the alarm. The subject of the song? The Scottsboro Boys: nine Black teenagers accused of raping two white women in what was, at the time, not so much a miscarriage of justice as it was standard operating procedure. The evidence was flimsy, the trials a farce, and the outrage, when it came at all, was years too late. But such was the legal pageantry of the Jim Crow South, robes, gavels, and a healthy disdain for anything resembling due process. The case would go on to help ignite the civil rights movement and loosely inspire To Kill A Mockingbird, a work of fiction that, ironically, became more widely taught in American schools than the real event ever was. Until, of course, it too was deemed dangerous and became one of the most banned books in America.

Lead Belly, born around 1888, a mere 23 years after slavery was technically abolished, though its spirit hung around like a houseguest who wouldn’t take the hint, became a voice for the voiceless. His music carried the bruises of a people told they were free while being worked, watched, and whipped by other means. He lived a wandering life, not out of whimsy, but because opportunity had a habit of walking right past Black men with guitars. He learned songs the old way, by ear, by heart, by necessity, preserving the history of a people the country had tried very hard to keep illiterate, and thus, conveniently forgettable, without history.

His oeuvre is a pillar of that noble cry from the depths of the Black experience, of knowing that you have to be conscious of the politics of race, class, systemic racism, and the ways that society is stratified and not equal. It was carved from the lived experience of being on the wrong side of every American promise. It was a clarion call for awareness of the steaming pile of racial injustice that the West has been drowning in since the first slave ship hit their shores.

“Woke” was never meant to be a fashion statement, nor a punchline for late-night pundits. It was forged in fire — a warning against complacency, a code of survival in a hostile world, a whispered truth passed hand to hand in places where speaking too loudly could cost you your job, your freedom, your life. And now? It’s been defanged, ridiculed, and repurposed as a laughable tool for the establishment to twist and use as a weapon against the very people who coined it. A tool turned trap.

But here we are.

That once-powerful symbol of resistance has been seized by the very institutions that have spent centuries systematically grinding Black lives into the dirt. The term’s true meaning – an enlightened awareness of the raw, open wound that is America’s racial nightmare – has been hijacked, rebranded, and bastardized by the media, politicians, and every smarmy corporate entity looking to peddle their brand of faux-progressive vacuousness.

White power structures, always ready to neutralize any threat to their dominion, have managed to take “woke” and turn it into a bad word. What was once a rallying cry for justice has been twisted into a political cudgel used to mock and discredit any real attempt to rip the veil off the charade of equality. It’s not just a matter of words, it’s an all out war on language itself. These are the same tricks they’ve been pulling for centuries, using distorted definitions and reworked narratives to keep the oppressed on the back foot.

The message is clear: If you’re Black and you’ve got the audacity to say, “Enough is enough,” you better brace yourself for a full-throttle media blitz designed to slap you back into line. “Woke” isn’t just a word anymore; it’s a weapon in the arsenal of those who would rather keep things as they are. Keep the system in place. Maintain the lie.

The war on the word is real. One must admire Governor Ron DeSantis, a man of such moral fortitude and delicate constitution that he has taken it upon himself to wage battle not against poverty, corruption, or corporate greed, but against a single four-letter word. With all the thunderous pomp of a preacher chasing demons out of a tent revival, he stood tall, or as tall as his platform shoes would allow, and declared with Churchillian solemnity: “We will fight the woke in the legislature. We will fight the woke in education. We will fight the woke in the businesses. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob.”

One would think he was rallying troops at the Somme, not banning Dr. Seuss in suburban Florida. And then, with the air of a man who had just won a duel at dawn, he announced, “Our state is where woke goes to die.” Which is to say, Florida has bravely volunteered to become the final resting place of empathy, historical accuracy, and critical thought, a noble sacrifice indeed. If only all public servants had such vision, such valor, such tireless commitment to the extermination of adjectives. The republic would be saved in no time.

But perhaps the word isn’t dead. Perhaps it’s only been buried alive, waiting to be reclaimed. Not diluted. Not defanged. Reclaimed.

Woke should still mean what it always did — a refusal to sleep through injustice, a refusal to walk blind through a rigged world. But now, we must open our eyes even wider. Because the danger has spread. The systems of domination are no longer content to whisper their intentions, they’re marching proudly through parliaments and prime-time, saluting strongmen and silencing dissent. Expansion of its meaning doesn’t mean dilution. It means depth. Woke must grow to meet the scale of the threat, but never lose sight of its roots.

The cruelty has gone global. In Hungary, in India, in Israel, in Italy, in Turkey, in Russia, in El Salvador, in Argentina and in the United States authoritarians are in power, while in consolidated democracies like France, Germany and Spain they are waiting in the wings for their chance to dismantle decades of hard-fought freedoms. From refugee camps to pride bans, from book bans and even book burnings to surveillance states, the machinery of control is humming louder than ever. Fascism might be wearing a friendlier face, corporate-backed and algorithm-approved, but its boots are just as heavy. And they still land first on the necks of the most vulnerable who then get sent to concentration camps with merch-friendly, tourist-board names like Alligator Alcatraz, where malice is privatized, sanitized, and sold with a Cruella smile.

To be woke today is not to simply repost a tweet or correct someone’s pronouns at brunch. It is to see — really see — the gears turning beneath the spectacle. To understand how the attacks on feminism are connected to the attacks on teachers. How banning history books is connected to banning abortions. How denying Palestinians their humanity is connected to deporting migrants at sea. How billionaires cosplaying as victims is just a distraction from the suffering they bankroll.

Woke is vigilance. Woke is resistance. Woke is knowing the storm is already here and choosing to stand against it, not just for yourself, but for everyone in its path. Being woke isn’t about performative outrage or headline-chasing culture wars. It’s not about manufactured grievances or moral panic over pronouns, casting choices or Happy Holidays. These distractions are meant to trivialize the real fight: your right to vote, your right to exist in freedom, the survival of the planet itself.

While the right derides “wokeness” as someone putting oat milk in their coffee or casting a Black mermaid, real wokeness is about sounding the alarm when protestors are jailed, dissidents are disappeared, elections are rigged, or laws are passed to ban books and criminalize care.

It’s time to pull “woke” out of the mud it’s been dragged through. To scrub off the satire and the sneers and remind people that it was never a joke. It was a lifeline. A warning label. A survival guide written in code. At its core, staying woke means staying alert to the theft of your rights — the right to protest, to learn your history, to love who you love, to exist without fear.

So let the word expand.
Let it rise.
Let it mean Black. Brown. Queer. Poor. Disabled. Undocumented. Defiant.
Let it mean being vigilant against every form of violence that power cloaks in flags, logos, and prayers.
Let it mean choosing the side of the oppressed, even if you’re not one of them, because freedom is a chain that breaks at its weakest link.

Woke was never supposed to be comfortable. It was supposed to keep you up at night.

Lead Belly wasn’t singing about branding or buzzwords. He was warning us. And in this moment, with democracy gasping and the jackboots echoing louder each day, there’s never been a better time to hear his voice. His warning hasn’t changed. The dangers still lurk in plain sight. Best stay woke.

The post The Word That Wouldn’t Die: Awake in the Age of Forgetting appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

Over the last year or so I’ve seen a disturbing tendency in tech/startup/VC worlds to buy into the neoreactionary view that for startups to be successful they need to get on board the Trump train. Yes, there are the big name folks who everyone knows about and who didn’t really surprise anyone—Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, David Sacks, Elon Musk (pre-fallout)—but the more troubling trend has been watching younger entrepreneurs and VCs listen to their podcasts, read their posts and books, and slowly nod along to the idea that democracy is holding back innovation.

The logic might seem compelling at first: regulations slow us down, politicians don’t understand tech, wouldn’t it be better if someone who “gets it” could just cut through all the bureaucratic nonsense? But this line of thinking leads directly to the neoreactionary conclusion that what we really need is a “tech-friendly” strongman to sweep away democratic institutions and let the smart people (spoiler: they mean themselves) run things.

It seems like it might be useful to point out how incredibly dangerous and counterproductive that utter nonsense is. The idea of a benevolent dictator to get past the nonsense is appealing for those who can’t think more than a step or two ahead and consider what happens next.

Look, I get it. You’re building something cool. You heard the stories some are telling of the Biden admin looking to regulate crypto or AI (not that any such regulations ever actually appeared) and you think “ugh, too heavy handed, just let me code.” And then you hear Trump promising to “cut red tape” and “unleash American innovation,” and you think: Finally, someone who gets it, someone who will stay out of my way.

But before you start crafting your “make coding great again” hat, let’s have a little chat about why embracing fascism is probably the worst possible business strategy for anyone actually trying to build something innovative.

I know, I know. “Fascism” sounds hyperbolic. You’re not goose-stepping around your WeWork space. You just want lower taxes and fewer forms to fill out. And trust me, I’ve spent 25 years calling out idiotic tech policy proposals by clueless politicians, so the idea of getting an administration that will “free up” tech sounds appealing.

But here’s the thing: there’s a reason this “tech-friendly dictator” fantasy has been bubbling up in VC circles and startup accelerators for years. It’s not just about cutting red tape—it’s about the fundamental belief that techbros like themselves shouldn’t have to deal with the messy compromises that democracy itself requires. They’d rather sweep away all those pesky democratic institutions and let the “smart people” (spoiler: they mean themselves) run things.

The basic pitch is seductive: democracy is messy, slow, and often staffed by people who don’t understand technology. Wouldn’t it be better to have someone in charge who just… gets it?

No. No, it would not.

The Dictator’s Innovation Trap

Here’s what the “just let tech bros run everything” crowd fundamentally misunderstands about how innovation actually works: It requires exactly the kind of chaotic, unpredictable, open ecosystem that authoritarianism systematically destroys.

Real innovation happens when companies have to compete on merit, not on who can kiss the leader’s ass most effectively. In a functioning democracy with actual rule of law, the best products have the opportunity to win. In an authoritarian system, the company that makes the dictator happy wins—and that’s it.

Think that sounds far-fetched? Look at how quickly Elon Musk’s companies started getting favorable treatment once he became Trump’s Number One donor. And then look at how quickly Trump turned on Elon and threatened to pull all the subsidies his businesses get from the federal government as punishment over Elon criticizing his budget plan. That’s not competition driving innovation—that’s cronyism driving mediocrity.

This isn’t theoretical. When political favor becomes more important than product quality, innovation dies. The companies that survive aren’t the ones building the best, most innovative products—they’re the ones best at navigating the whims of whoever’s in power.

The Brain Drain You’re Not Thinking About

Want to know what really kills innovation? Brain drain. And nothing drives brain drain like encroaching fascism.

And the brain drain has already started.

Foreign students are looking to study elsewhere rather than deal with visa uncertainty and hostile rhetoric. Many of America’s smartest researchers are being wooed to other countries that offer more stable funding and less political interference. International PhD students, postdocs, and visiting researchers—the people who often go on to start the most innovative companies—are increasingly choosing Canada, the UK, or other destinations over the US.

This isn’t just the H-1B visa holders that the Trump inner circle loves to demonize. It’s the entire global talent pool that has always seen America as the place where you could build something amazing without worrying about arbitrary political interference.

The United States became the global innovation leader in part because we attracted the best and brightest from around the world. They came here because we had something other countries didn’t: a stable, democratic system where merit mattered more than connections, where you could build something without worrying that tomorrow’s political winds might destroy everything you’ve worked for.

But that’s been trashed. In mere months.

History shows us what happens when countries drive away intellectual talent. When authoritarian regimes came to power in the past, they didn’t just drive out targeted groups—they drove out anyone who valued intellectual freedom and scientific integrity. The result? Countries like the United States got Einstein, Fermi, and a whole generation of brilliant minds who helped build the post-war economy.

You think the smartest engineers and entrepreneurs from around the world are going to want to move to a country run by a dictator? Even a supposedly “tech-friendly” one?

The Infrastructure You Take For Granted

You know what else makes innovation possible? Boring stuff like universities, research institutions, and a functioning legal system.

You know what authoritarian regimes love to do? Gut all of those things.

Think about where most breakthrough technologies actually come from. Not from some genius in a garage (though that’s a nice story). They come from decades of basic research funded by institutions that operate independently of political pressure. The internet you’re using to read this? That was DARPA. The GPS in your phone? Military research. The algorithms powering AI? University research.

Here’s how the ecosystem actually works: government funds basic research that has no obvious commercial application. Universities and research institutions build on that work, training graduate students who become the next generation of researchers and entrepreneurs. Some of those students go on to start companies that turn basic research into products. Others stay in academia and continue pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.

Yes, eventually the private markets and companies take over the commercialization, but so much of the core infrastructure of innovation comes from elsewhere.

And none of this happens overnight. The internet took decades to go from ARPANET to the web. GPS took years of satellite launches and signal processing advances. The machine learning techniques powering today’s AI boom are built on decades of research in statistics, computer science, and neuroscience.

Fascists hate independent institutions. They see them as threats to their authority. So they defund them, politicize them, or just straight-up destroy them. And when they do, innovation dies—not immediately, but over the course of years as the pipeline of basic research dries up.

The Trust Problem

Here’s something else you might not have considered: innovation requires trust. Not just between individuals, but institutional trust. People need to believe that contracts will be enforced, that property rights will be protected, that the rules won’t change arbitrarily based on the whims of whoever’s in charge.

Building a startup requires long-term thinking. You’re asking employees to bet their careers on your vision. You’re asking investors to put money into something that might not pay off for years. You’re asking customers to trust that your product will be supported and improved over time.

None of that works in an environment where the rules change based on political caprice.

You think venture capitalists are going to invest in your startup if they’re worried that next month’s political purge might decide that your industry is suddenly “unpatriotic”? You think customers are going to adopt your product if they’re concerned that using it might put them on some government enemies list? Biden may not have been the most tech friendly president, but he didn’t threaten to deport a tech CEO over a policy disagreement.

Authoritarian systems are fundamentally unpredictable. The rules change based on the leader’s mood, personal vendettas, or political needs. That’s the opposite of the stable, predictable environment that innovation requires. When political favor matters more than legal precedent, no one can plan for the future.

The Historical Precedent

Here’s the thing about fascism: it never ends well. Not for the countries that embrace it, not for the people who live under it, and definitely not for the entrepreneurs who think they can ride the tiger.

Every authoritarian regime in history has eventually turned on the business community that initially supported it. The oligarchs who think they can control the dictator always end up learning the hard way that the dictator controls them.

You think the tech bros who are currently sucking up to Trump are going to maintain their influence indefinitely? Just ask Elon Musk. One day you’re the world’s richest man and Trump’s “first buddy,” the next day you’re being publicly humiliated and threatened with the destruction of your business empire because you criticized his “one big beautiful bill” for being a disaster.

And that’s just the beginning. Historical patterns are clear: authoritarian leaders use business elites to consolidate power, then systematically eliminate them as independent actors. The German industrialists who bankrolled Hitler’s rise thought they could control him. The Russian oligarchs who backed Putin in the early days thought they could maintain their influence through personal relationships.

They were all wrong. Dictators don’t share power. They accumulate it. And when they’re done using you, they discard you—or worse.

The Choice

So here’s your choice: you can embrace the chaotic, messy, sometimes frustrating democratic system that has produced more innovation than any other system in human history. Or you can bet your company’s future on a dictator who eagerly promises to make everything simple and efficient mainly by ignoring the nuances and complexities of reality.

One of these has a track record of creating the richest, most innovative economy in human history. The other has a track record of destroying everything it touches—including those who support it early on.

Democracy isn’t perfect. It’s slow, it’s messy, it’s often staffed by people who don’t understand technology. But it’s also the only system that has consistently created the conditions for innovation to flourish: open competition, institutional independence, predictable rules, and the freedom to build something without worrying about political retaliation.

Fascism is really good at one thing: making everything worse.

If you’re really building something that matters, something that could change the world, you want that world to be one where merit matters more than loyalty, where competition drives progress, where the best ideas win regardless of who came up with them.

You want democracy. You just might not realize it yet.

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SOURCE: reuters.com